LÚCIA RUMOR Who are the Kallos Turin duo? KALLOS TURIN Kallos Turin was founded by Stephania Kallos and Abigail Turin. Stephania was raised in a beach community in Cape Town and Abby grew up in Berkeley, California. The pair first met in London while working at the office of the legendary David Chipperfield in the late 1990s. Abby had arrived in London straight out of graduate school at Harvard and Stephania had come from Claudio Silvestrin’s office. Abby was hired as part of the residential team, while Stephania was working on retail and hotels. We overlapped for less than a year at Chipperfield’s office but became good friends. When Abby moved back to California, we stayed in touch. The firm was founded as a bi-continental office – back when technology was not as helpful in making remote work easy. Having a presence in London and California has been an important aspect of our practice; we are each looking daily at different things, walking different streets, seeing different art shows...

As you mentioned, you both got to know each other in London, while working in another design studio. When did you feel you were ready to start your own studio and partnership? We don’t think it was so much about knowing we were ready, but rather about taking a leap of faith and seizing opportunities as they arose. Since we both went out on our own at the same time, we started by helping each other with our first solo projects – and we were able to fill in the gaps in the other’s experience and offer support in those early years when we didn’t have the benefit of a full office team. Abby had moved back to California, but had a project in the South of France, and shortly thereafter, Stephania got a project in Austria. Those two projects were the first time we collaborated on design, and we quickly recognized that our collaboration felt very natural. A partnership was formed over the next few years that then developed formally into Kallos Turin. We joke that we have fought about a million things, but never about design. On design, we have always been aligned and are great at pushing each other to make our work better.